Caterpillar Creepy Crawly. Or, everything happens in time.

Little baby Autumn,

You are not so little anymore. And neither is your vocabulary, appetite, or capacity for endless energy. We live in Tennessee and we have for almost four months now. Your Dad is on another degree chase, feet on the ground and off to a running start. You miss him when is away, sometimes during the day while we're playing you look up at me with eyes wide like you suddenly remembered how much you love him and that you haven't seen him in a while, and you shout "Daaa!" and run to the door and point and repeat, "Daa! Daa! Daaaaa!" He is working hard, and reading so many books. But when he comes home, he hugs you first. And he spins you around and tosses you about and wrestles you on the floor until you can't breathe from laughter.

You are not even two years old yet, and you are already reminding me to slow down, and pay attention to the important things. For almost a week now, you have begun looking at me when I give you your food at the table and saying "Sit!" while pointing at the chair next to you. I admit, I used to use your eating time as a chance to do the dishes or clean up the living room while you were guaranteed to be occupied for a few minutes. Now, we sit, and we "talk." And I am better for it.

I admit to you, sometimes being a mom makes it hard to be yourself as well. At least, it seems that way. And the temptation is to leave you to yourself, watching tv, or playing with toys while I clean, or look at my phone, or just sit in quiet. But the truth is that I am anxious all the time I do this. And I think it is because I know that I am one woman who is trying to divide who she is. I seem to think, if I can't paint and write, and do what I want with all my time I am not being true to myself. But when I do take the time to read a book I want to read, or drink a whole hot cup of coffee (which I sometimes fear I will fade away without) I feel as though I am not doing enough as your mother.

But then there are days like today. When we spend the whole day actually seeing one another, and laughing, and sharing. When we go new places (even that one corner of the yard we haven't seen yet) and we eat together, and hold frogs, and make houses for caterpillars so that we can watch the cocoon happen. And I have these flashes to memories of your Nana and I, when I'm 15 and in the car talking about songs or shopping for prom dresses, and experiencing this dichotomy of feeling like I understood so much more about life than she did, but the fear that if that were true she wouldn't share herself with me anymore, and the even bigger fear that it wasn't true at all. And the feeling of sitting across from her at a Mexican restaurant secretly drinking in every part of the way she talked to me like I was an adult. And sitting in wonder at how she treated me with the confidence that I could handle myself. The way I slept in her room every night after the divorce because I didn't know what else to do, telling her and myself it was because I wanted to to watch the TV shows she'd recorded. But knowing it meant I could talk to her as I fell asleep.

And I realized today the wonderful and complex relationship between a mother and daughter goes so much deeper than what I am living with in mind. And I will tell you here, in these letters, how I felt when I was 13, and how I felt when I was 15, and how I feel now that I'm 29. Because there are parts of my life I'm afraid I have not given due justice. That I've walked quickly through because of fear, and covered up because of misunderstanding. But I promise to remember them when you are 15 and you seem like you would rather be anywhere than at a restaurant with me. I will not take it personally when I recognize the flailing behind your eyes when you think your life is passing you by while you shop for pants with me. Because I know this, you are mine now, you will be mine then, and you will come home to me when you are older. Once you have learned to harmonize your life and yourself.  Because we love one another in a way that is sustainable and constant. I will be stable, and patiently wait for you to call me for dinner or a movie because I know that when you do, you will really need me to be there. But do call me. Tell me to "Sit!" and talk with you when I seem distant, because I am still, as an adult learning to harmonize my life and myself. I am my happiest when I am with you as myself, wholly and completely undivided.

I'll always be there for you, as you are there for me. It is a divine connection that I promise to nourish and dedicate myself to for the rest of my life.

I love you,
-I am your mom.

somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond

Autumn, 

I will remember all of my life lying with you beneath blankets in my bed. Glimpses of your little tooth grin and blue eye wonder peering over cotton mountains. (There you are!) Little lips leaning in for the sweetest kiss (over and over) that brings me back to faith in things like love, connection, need, and the simple complexity of personhood. I may not know how to teach all the truth this life holds. I'm afraid that, sometimes, even mom's are afraid of the dark. But I know this. I will spend my whole life surrounding you with the undoubtable truth that you are loved. And I will sing forever praises to the way your living touches the quiet places in my heart that lay dormant for so long, and makes them gasp with the surprise of feeling alive and vulnerable. 

______________________________________________

somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which I cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though I have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, I and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(I do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

e.ecummings

Autumn in Spring: Letter from Dad

Today's letter is from Dad:

All the spring days are not bright and warm, sharp in flowering contrast and bluelike cloudlessness

Some are still re-stretched with cooler whitishness, holding on to wintery soft soupysky.
.Foggy remnants of yesterseason.

I followed such an example once, 
Thinking it noble to breach the oncoming differences
In the name of devotion to a picture(esque)
of a time that had its time.

But we have to look forward to look back.
Go straight to return to beginning of a time always passing.

Tell the winter to let go; it is springtime now.
And the autumn will come always after the natural greens of cricket legs and duller browngreys of earthworms, digging down deeper and deeper to the core, the root of your childhood.

Making fertile the coming back home again, 
through the front door of the screen porch every and all the summer nights.

Sweet baby, Autumn.

I haven't written you in a while. But not for lack of thought, or lack of love. I've been busy living life with you. You have grown so much! I'm afraid, if I turn for even a moment, your childhood will have passed us by. You are running and climbing. You are becoming who you are. There are things you love, and things you don't like at all. You feel sad, and happy, and excited, and frustrated, and proud in such a whirlwind I hardly have time to appreciate each one before it's on to the next.

You have a toy boat, and for some reason, you've decided that it BELONGS in the drawer of our side table. Only, it doesn't fit. Not exactly. It will lay down in the drawer (a feat you were so proud to accomplish) but when you go to open the drawer, the sail gets stuck. I watch you try and try, and sometimes you push me away when I try to help. And then you get so angry that you just sit down and cry. Then I will help you get it out, only to have you immediately open the drawer and lay it back in. For weeks, I turned the table around so the drawer would face the wall, but the day I turned it back around, you walked straight over to your boat, carried it to the table, and put it inside.

I know it's difficult for you. But I'm proud. I'm proud that you created a place for it on your very own. I'm proud that you remembered it after such a long time had passed. And I'm proud that you try so hard when it doesn't work the way it's supposed to. You get that from your Dad. You also get the short temper when they don't work from him too, but that's another letter.

I'm afraid I don't give you enough credit sometimes. You are very smart. And very kind. You share all of your food. Even the gummy crackers you've been working on for fifteen minutes. You share them with me and your Dad and all your stuffed animals.

Currently, due to your overwhelming kindness, we are sharing an unfortunate stomach flu. It amazes me how you can feel so bad and still be so loving. You woke up with it. When we came into your room and realized you had been sick all over your bed, you were standing there, beaming at us because we came to you. Maybe it's something that happens when you become an adult, but I will tell you in this letter, we were not beaming. And today, when we were both ill with it, we certainly weren't beaming.

You are such a big girl now, that I do not have to rock you to sleep. You have learned to sleep on your own. And I will be honest in way that you will understand when you have children, I am very grateful. But tonight, since you are not feeling well, and were having trouble falling asleep (even with baby lamb, and your music box) I rocked you. And sitting in the rocking chair, your sweet head on my arm, I was overcome with a feeling I didn't immediately recognize.

I was sad.

I was overcome as I hummed to you the songs I used to sing as you fell asleep. And I realized these songs have no place in our busy toddler world.They've been replaced with faster repetitive songs. Ones with hand motions and lots of clapping. These lullabies somehow slipped into the past, like the footy pajama's I've packed away, and the baby bottles I no longer prepare for you when you're hungry. But the difference is, I realized when I was putting away your baby things that we were moving on to a new era, together.

There is something that happens sometimes when you are falling asleep, next to someone who cares about you, feeling safe and overwhelmed with love. It's like all time happens at once, and you are a child, and a lover, and a mother, and you are free from your body in a few dreamy moments to live your whole life over. You watch the sun patterns on the blanket tent your grandmother has hung from the clothes line. You lick birthday cake off your fingers while your mother sings to you. You bury tonka trucks in the dirt with your brother. You ride a bike down the big hill for the first time. You feel brave. You feel the flutter in your stomach that feels a lot like panic, but is really wonder, the first time someone kisses you. You marry your best friend and realize, oh, this is what love is. You move from city to city. You feel new. And you get to do these things because in those moments you are protected, and hopeful, and happy. And you are free to let go of your present worries, and your busy days and just be who you are and always have been.

I felt that tonight with you. I hummed your lullabies and found myself in our hospital room, watching you sleep and hoping to God, you didn't stop breathing. I was in our apartment in California the first few chances I had to be alone with you, setting up your nursery. Trying to remember the words to Hush Little Baby. And singing Flying Dreams to you, realizing how perfect the lyrics were for your first lullaby. And feeling like, when I sang to you, I was somehow being a mother despite not having the faintest idea of how to.

And tonight, when I was singing those songs to you, I realized they had somehow been lost. Like moments from my childhood that can only be remembered in that dreaming place. And I was nostalgic in a way that ached for you to be small enough to rest against my chest again. For those sweet moments where we were learning together what it meant to belong to one another.

When you finally fell asleep, you were almost too heavy for me to carry to your crib and lift you over the edge. And when I placed you inside you woke for just a moment, and looked me in the eyes and held my arm before you turned over and hugged your baby lamb.

I haven't written you in a while, because I've been busy living life with you. But I promise, to never get to busy living life, to write you. These are moments I will remember. Snapshots I will carry with me when I am old, and you are older. I want to cherish them all.

I'm not too busy,
I am your mom.